Obesity Prevalence and Dietary Intake of Antioxidants in Native American Adolescents

Antioxidants are well known for possessing anti-inflammatory properties, which can reduce the risk of chronic disease and obesity. However, very little research has been done to examine antioxidant intake among adolescent minority populations such as Native American adolescents. Our study examined the significance of antioxidant intake among Native American adolescents at an urban residential high school in Southern California. Our study population consisted of 183 male and female Native American adolescents, 14-18 years of age, representing 43 tribes from across the United States. Students' primary source of meals was provided by the school food service. Based on the BMI calculations, the rate of obesity within our population was 38% for males and 40% for females, more than two-fold the national rate indicated by NHANESIII data. We used the Harvard School of Public Health Youth/Adolescent Questionnaire (HSPH YAQ), a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire, to examine antioxidant nutrient intake and evaluate the differences in the intake between normal and obese weight students. Statistical analysis of the results showed that intakes of vitamins C, E, and lycopene were the antioxidant nutrients found to be significantly different between normal and obese weight students and intakes of these nutrients were found to be higher among normal weight students (p-values = 0.02451, 0.00847, and 0.04928, respectively). These results suggest that dietary intake of antioxidants could be increased among Native American adolescents. Further research is needed to confirm our findings and identify effective ways for school food service to incorporate antioxidant rich foods into school menus

PRUNE1: a disease-causing gene for secondary microcephaly

In their Letter to the Editor, Karakaya et al. (2017) present an interesting case report describing the clinical course involving secondary microcephaly of a 3-year-old Turkish boy found to be homozygous for a frameshift mutation in PRUNE1 identified through whole exome sequencing. The child presented with congenital hypotonia, contractures and global developmental delay with respiratory insufficiency and seizures developing in the first year of life. The authors note that the affected child’s head circumference plotted on the 75th centile at birth, and that by 38 months of age he had developed microcephaly. Neuroimaging at 14 months revealed cerebral and cerebellar atrophy consistent with other patients described with Prune syndrome (Karaca et al., 2015; Costain et al., 2017; Zollo et al., 2017). Although the child had abnormal neurology from birth, there was a period of early developmental regression. Peripheral spasticity in the lower extremities and optic atrophy were not documented until 38 months. In addition to the PRUNE1 variant, Karakaya et al. also identified a second homozygous variant in the CCDC14 gene in the Turkish child’s whole exome sequencing data that, while listed to have an allele count of 108 in the current Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) release, is notably absent in homozygous fashion (Lek et al., 2016). CCDC14 is known to be expressed in human brain, reported to negatively regulate centriole duplication and interact with proteins previously associated with primary microcephaly (Firat-Karalar et al., 2014). Thus, while it seems likely that the homozygous PRUNE1 variant is primarily responsible for the clinical presentation in the Turkish child, it is impossible to determine whether there may be any phenotypical contribution from this additional homozygous sequence variant. Recently, Costain et al. (2017) described a homozygous consensus splice site variant in PRUNE1 (c.521-2A4G; NM_021222.1) in a 2-year-old Oji-Cre male who presented with congenital hypotonia and talipes, whose head circumference was large at birth ( +3 standard deviations), but by 2 years and 2 months plotted on the 50th centile, with a weight and height on the 95th and 75th centiles, respectively. However, it should be noted that the child’s father is macrocephalic ( +4 standard deviations), the published clinical photographs at 2 years 5 months of age illustrate bitemporal narrowing, a sloping forehead and large ears, consistent with a developing microcephaly, and neuroimaging revealed cortical and cerebellar atrophy. He developed respiratory insufficiency shortly after birth, and infantile spasms in the first year of life (Costain et al., 2017). It remains to be determined how the phenotypical outcomes stemming from proposed loss-of-function mutations defined by Karakaya et al. and Costain et al., relate to missense mutations published by Karaca et al. and also Zollo et al., which are likely to involve at least partial gain-of-function outcomes in PRUNE1 activity. However, as more cases are investigated and published, the phenotype associated with autosomal recessive Prune neurodevelopmental disorder, and the functional outcomes of PRUNE1 mutation, are becoming clearer. It is now apparent that while some patients have a small head at birth and others a head circumference in the normal range, the key component of the microcephaly is that it is progressive, and associated with characteristic neuroimaging findings with a thin or hypoplastic corpus callosum and cortical and cerebellar atrophy developing in early childhood. Although all patients with Prune syndrome described to date are neurologically impaired from birth, there also appears to be a neurodegenerative component with progression of the disorder. In our manuscript, we described clinical overlap of Prune syndrome with the neurodegenerative condition associated with homozygous mutations in TBCD (Zollo et al., 2017). TBCD encodes one of the five tubulin-specific chaperones that are required for a/b-tubulin de novo heterodimer formation and the disorder is characterized by developmental regression, seizures, optic atrophy and secondary microcephaly, cortical atrophy with delayed myelination, cerebellar atrophy and thinned corpus callosum (Edvardson et al., 2016; Flex et al., 2016; Miyake et al., 2016; Pode-Shakked et al., 2017). The neurodegenerative phenotype documented in the Turkish child by Karakaya et al. further demonstrates the similarities with the TBCD disorder and Prune syndrome, and confirms optic atrophy to be a feature of Prune syndrome. Interestingly, it is also becoming clear that respiratory insufficiency is a common feature of Prune syndrome, having been documented by Karakaya et al. and in the Oji-Cre child, as well as the youngest affected Omani child described in our manuscript

A theory-based approach to understanding condom errors and problems reported by men attending an STI clinic

The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2008 Springer VerlagWe employed the information–motivation–behavioral skills (IMB) model to guide an investigation of correlates for correct condom use among 278 adult (18–35 years old) male clients attending a sexually transmitted infection (STI) clinic. An anonymous questionnaire aided by a CD-recording of the questions was administered. Linear Structural Relations Program was used to conduct path analyses of the hypothesized IMB model. Parameter estimates showed that while information did not directly affect behavioral skills, it did have a direct (negative) effect on condom use errors. Motivation had a significant direct (positive) effect on behavioral skills and a significant indirect (positive) effect on condom use errors through behavioral skills. Behavioral skills had a direct (negative) effect on condom use errors. Among men attending a public STI clinic, these findings suggest brief, clinic-based, safer sex programs for men who have sex with women should incorporate activities to convey correct condom use information, instill motivation to use condoms correctly, and directly enhance men’s behavioral skills for correct use of condoms

Universality in solar flare and earthquake occurrence

Earthquakes and solar flares are phenomena involving huge and rapid releases of energy characterized by complex temporal occurrence. By analysing available experimental catalogs, we show that the stochastic processes underlying these apparently different phenomena have universal properties. Namely both problems exhibit the same distributions of sizes, inter-occurrence times and the same temporal clustering: we find afterflare sequences with power law temporal correlations as the Omori law for seismic sequences. The observed universality suggests a common approach to the interpretation of both phenomena in terms of the same driving physical mechanism

Diffusion entropy and waiting time statistics of hard x-ray solar flares

We analyze the waiting time distribution of time distances $\tau$ between two nearest-neighbor flares. This analysis is based on the joint use of two distinct techniques. The first is the direct evaluation of the distribution function $\psi(\tau)$, or of the probability, $\Psi(tau)$, that no time distance smaller than a given $\tau$ is found. We adopt the paradigm of the inverse power law behavior, and we focus on the determination of the inverse power index $\mu$, without ruling out different asymptotic properties that might be revealed, at larger scales, with the help of richer statistics. The second technique, called Diffusion Entropy (DE) method, rests on the evaluation of the entropy of the diffusion process generated by the time series. The details of the diffusion process depend on three different walking rules, which determine the form and the time duration of the transition to the scaling regime, as well as the scaling parameter $\delta$. With the first two rules the information contained in the time series is transmitted, to a great extent, to the transition, as well as to the scaling regime. The same information is essentially conveyed, by using the third rules, into the scaling regime, which, in fact, emerges very quickly after a fast transition process. We show that the significant information hidden within the time series concerns memory induced by the solar cycle, as well as the power index $\mu$. The scaling parameter $\delta$ becomes a simple function of $\mu$, when memory is annihilated. Thus, the three walking rules yield a unique and precise value of $\mu$ if the memory is wisely taken under control, or cancelled by shuffling the data. All this makes compelling the conclusion that $\mu = 2.138 \pm 0.01$.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figure

Obesity Prevalence and Dietary Intake of Antioxidants in Native American Adolescents

Antioxidants are well known for possessing anti-inflammatory properties, which can reduce the risk of chronic disease and obesity. However, very little research has been done to examine antioxidant intake among adolescent minority populations such as Native American adolescents. Our study examined the significance of antioxidant intake among Native American adolescents at an urban residential high school in Southern California. Our study population consisted of 183 male and female Native American adolescents, 14-18 years of age, representing 43 tribes from across the United States. Students’ primary source of meals was provided by the school food service. Based on the BMI calculations, the rate of obesity within our population was 38% for males and 40% for females, more than two-fold the national rate indicated by NHANESIII data. We used the Harvard School of Public Health Youth/Adolescent Questionnaire (HSPH YAQ), a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire, to examine antioxidant nutrient intake and evaluate the differences in the intake between normal and obese weight students. Statistical analysis of the results showed that intakes of vitamins C, E, and lycopene were the antioxidant nutrients found to be significantly different between normal and obese weight students and intakes of these nutrients were found to be higher among normal weight students (p-values = 0.02451, 0.00847, and 0.04928, respectively). These results suggest that dietary intake of antioxidants could be increased among Native American adolescents. Further research is needed to confirm our findings and identify effective ways for school food service to incorporate antioxidant rich foods into school menus

Synergistic information supports modality integration and flexible learning in neural networks solving multiple tasks

Striking progress has been made in understanding cognition by analyzing how the brain is engaged in different modes of information processing. For instance, so-called synergistic information (information encoded by a set of neurons but not by any subset) plays a key role in areas of the human brain linked with complex cognition. However, two questions remain unanswered: (a) how and why a cognitive system can become highly synergistic; and (b) how informational states map onto artificial neural networks in various learning modes. Here we employ an information-decomposition framework to investigate neural networks performing cognitive tasks. Our results show that synergy increases as networks learn multiple diverse tasks, and that in tasks requiring integration of multiple sources, performance critically relies on synergistic neurons. Overall, our results suggest that synergy is used to combine information from multiple modalities—and more generally for flexible and efficient learning. These findings reveal new ways of investigating how and why learning systems employ specific information-processing strategies, and support the principle that the capacity for general-purpose learning critically relies on the system’s information dynamics

Influence of the definition of dissipative events on their statistics

A convenient and widely used way to study the turbulent plasma in the solar corona is to do statistics of properties of events (or structures), associated with flares, that can be found in observations or in numerical simulations. Numerous papers have followed such a methodology, using different definitions of an event, but the reasons behind the choice of a particular definition (and not another one) is very rarely discussed. We give here a comprehensive set of possible event definitions starting from a one-dimensional data set such as a time-series of energy dissipation. Each definition is then applied to a time-series of energy dissipation issued from simulations of a shell-model of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence as defined in Giuliani and Carbone (1998), or from a new model of coupled shell-models designed to represent a magnetic loop in the solar corona. We obtain distributions of the peak dissipation power, total energy, duration and waiting-time associated to each definition. These distributions are then investigated and compared, and the influence of the definition of an event on statistics is discussed. In particular, power-law distributions are more likely to appear when using a threshold. The sensitivity of the distributions to the definition of an event seems also to be weaker for events found in a highly intermittent time series. Some implications on statistical results obtained from observations are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figures. Submitted to Astronomy&Astrophysic